Chipotle Spikes On Headline it’s Mulling Opening a Burger Chain

So Chipotle is now the inverse Jack in the Box (ticker: JACK)? Jack in the Box owns a chain of disgusting hamburger shops and pivoted to the Qdoba brand of slop, after recognizing Chipotle’s immense success serving quality Mexican fare. Lo and behold, times have changed and Chipotle tacos are now synonymous with debilitating food poisoning.

Shares of CMG are higher by $7 or 1.5% on this news.

This is more of an indictment of how poorly the Chipotle brand is struggling to regain its footing than a pivot into a market that is seemingly attractive to restaurateurs. It’s an act of weakness and the stock should be sold.

If CMG wants to play this game right, they should bid $55 for SHAK and help fuel growth under that pristine brand, instead of trying to flip burgers themselves. They’ll likely poison people in their hamburger shops too, since they still haven’t figured out what the culprit was that has caused so many cases of food poisoning.

UPDATE: “We have two non-Chipotle growth seeds open now ? ShopHouse and Pizzeria Locale ? and have noted before that the Chipotle model could be applied to a wide variety of foods,” a spokesman from Chipotle told CNBC.

UPDATE: They have trademarked the name ‘BetterBurger.’

The last time XLE traded higher by 10% or more during the month of March was in 1999 and 2000. In April of 1999, XLE soared by another 14.5%. In 2000, it traded lower by a mere 1.5%.

As of today, XLE is up 10% for the month of March. The core components of XLE are XOM, CVX, SLB, OXY and PXD–making up 40% of the ETF.

As you can see by the seasonality date from Exodus, XLE tends to do very well in April.

More importantly, analyzing 45 years of trading data in XOM, April is, by far, the strongest month for the stock.

I am short XLE and do believe there is an appreciable downside to the sector, at some point in 2016. However, most of the debt for the industry isn’t going to be renegotiated until after 2017. If there is ever going to be a run in oil, now is the time for it to happen.

My basis for short XLE, which comprises 50% of my current holdings, is a touch of $63. Moreover, I will short more if Exodus spits out another overbought signal from now until next Monday, which is when the entirety of my position is scheduled to be closed out. But understand something, I do not believe the cataclysm is coming for the sector just yet.

That, my friends, will happen in August.

Tax collection is falling short. Their fucking tinpot President is facing impeachment. Their markets have surged 21% over the past month alone.

This is Brazil.

The deficit before interest payments, which includes results of states, municipalities and government-owned companies, reached 23 billion reais ($6.4 billion) in February following a stronger than estimated surplus of 27.9 billion reais in January, the central bank said Wednesday. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expected a gap of 11 billion reais.

“There’s expectation that more parties will follow PMDB and leave the president,” said Jason Vieira, the chief economist at Infinity Asset Management in Sao Paulo. “Investors don’t care who the leaders are. They’re interested in seeing an improvement in economic policies.”

The best performing Brazilian stocks, over the past month, that trade here are: GGB (+87%), PBR (+70%), SID (+63%), CIG (+59%), VALE (+52%), BBD (+48%), GOL (+47%) and ELP (+43%).

The main Brazilian ETF, EWZ, is up 34% for the month.

Following the Brazilian market, Turkey ranks #2 in year to date performance, up 15.5%–because everyone wants to invest in a country wrought with migrants and psychotic head cutters running around–blowing up people in strip malls.

Retarded.

How is this a topic of discussion? The fucking media and their imaginary scandals.

I am pinning this post here for several hours, barring a Martian invasion at Grovers Mill. Please help this lad from the sewers of Brooklyn understand what is transpiring over at the Federal Reserve.

Just yesterday, the Chair of the Fed said we needed to ease up on the rate hike talk and behold the fuckery of global economies, for they were slowing. Markets surged on the news. We went from a potential April rate hike to none at all inside of a few hours.

Now, in a fuckery to end all fuckeries, the Chicago Fed President, Charlie Evans, said the economy was super strong. Smugly and with confidence, he boasted of a 2.5% GDP estimate–concocted out of his office. This, of course, is above median consensus. Because of this eventuality, coupled with the robust jobs market, inflation might edge up towards 2%, or more.

Flatly stated, he believes the Fed will hike “two or more” times in 2016, totally and completely ignoring what Fed Chair Yellen said yesterday–as if she were an apparition–invisible to the Chicago pizza eating eye.

No one gives a shit. Dow futures are higher by 106, as if Evans never said this. BUT I HAVE THE VIDEO.

What the fuck? In what will go down as the largest recall in automobile history, defective airbags that fuck people into windshields, the Japanese supplier, Takata, said they will incur an outrageous $24 billion write down–worst case scenario of course.

Shares plunged in Japan overnight.

They might need to recall a comical 287 million airbags. Good luck doing the paperwork for all of that.

“Even if this is the worst-case simulation, it shows the company has seen some possibility,” Ken Miyao, an analyst with Tokyo-based market researcher Carnorama, said by phone. “The question is how much the carmakers want to split the costs. But even if Takata only bears half of the cost, this would still be beyond their scope.”

This new estimate of loss exceeds the previous one put forward by Jefferies by $7 billion.

The indomitable Apple caught an upgrade this morning by the pencil pushers at Cowen, who cite OLED as a growth driver for 2017. Moreover, they suggest the company will unveil some ‘dreamy’ form factors.

This is pure bullshit, a ploy to get publicity for their 4th tier investment bank.

Via Briefing.com

Cowen upgrades AAPL to Outperform from Market Perform and raises their tgt to $135 from $125. Y/Y compares and forward estimates have bottomed, iPhone 7 will benefit if nothing else from the 6/6+ “echo” effect as these units enter the upgrade base, OLED in ’17 solves growth concerns + builds a bridge to new “dreamy” form factors, and valuation provides a solid backstop. Firm now believes co could adopt OLED in ’17 for all new flagship iPhone, not just high-end “niche” model. This potentially equates to ~80-100MM+ units w/some flexible rigid design likely, migrating to full flexible in ’18. Additionally, while they see CQ1 revenue biased toward the low-end of $50-53B rev guidance given ongoing 6S softness, it is hard to see rev below the low end with FX modeling also suggesting ~100-150bps better than assumed in AAPL guide.

Bill Gross is out with a love letter this morning, addressed to the central banks of the world who think negative interest rates are this cool and innovative new tool to help solve their problems. He warns that very soon capital gains will become ‘giant pandas’ and that GDPs need to start inching upwards, otherwise they’re all inexorably fucked.

“Capital gains and the expectations for future gains will become Giant Pandas – very rare and sort of inefficient at reproduction,” Gross said. “I’m saying that developed and emerging economies are flying at stall speed and they’ve got to bump up nominal GDP growth rates or else. Cross your fingers.”

Gross warned against investing in negative-yielding securities.

“The real market and the real economy await a different conclusion as losses from negative rates result in capital losses, not capital gains,” he said. “Investors cannot make money when money yields nothing. Unless… nominal GDP can be raised to levels that allow central banks to normalize short-term interest rates, then south instead of north is the logical direction for markets.”

Normalize rates or die, in plain terms.

It was a trap. As a matter of fact, it has always been a trap.

Markets are designed to trade higher with population growth. The more stuff we make and buy, the higher stock prices go.

Over in Europe, equity prices are rejoicing, as Islamic migrants rampage throughout their cities in search for treasure.

Here in the good old USA, futures are indicating a triple digit run to new highs.

In the land of Le Fly, just one man is king. Said royalty will be dealing with a rather arduous plumbing issue today. Very soon, I will be entreated to the dirties men alive rampaging through my home, punching holes in my sheetrock–behaving like regular Donkey Kongs.

It’s all for the greater good, so I’ll grit my teeth and bear the downside.

As for stocks, my SPY long will offset some of the losses I stand to endure in my XLE short. It’s worth noting, Exodus won again…inexorably.

Both the democratic and republican parties are crime families. There is no difference between the Italian mafia and the GOP, other than the fact that in most Italian crime families there is a code of honor amongst thieves.

News is buzzing all over the internet that D. Trump just announced he’d no longer support another GOP candidate for President.

Well, in light of the fact that it’s a mathematical impossibility for any of them to defeat him, pray tell, why should he?

This is absolute lunacy that all of the media outlets are running this as news, without stating the obvious. The GOP are actively and openly trying to deny the public of their choice for presidential candidate.

Trump should just win all of the primaries, then go to the convention and resign from the party, right there on the floor, throwing two middle fingers in the air and run as a third party candidate.

I am 100% fine with Hillary becoming President, as long as the GOP is completely and utterly destroyed in the process.